Reception Theory and Pulp Fiction

            In defining reception theory in Literary Theory: an Introduction, Terry Eagleton writes, “The text itself is really no more than a series of ‘cues’ to the reader, invitations to construct a piece of language into meaning.” Reception theory gives power to the reader. They take what is implicitly written about setting, characters, and plot and use this context to form a richer “wholeness” to the text that can’t be found with merely the information made explicit within the text. A film like Pulp Fiction allows viewers to engage with the work in similar ways, while also exposing the limitations of the theory.

            Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction weaves four separate stories together, not only jumping back and forth between narratives, but also chronology. The film begins and ends with a couple attempting to hold up a restaurant, a scene that takes place chronologically in the middle of the rest of the action in the film. The highly stylized editing of the film forces the viewer to engage with the film and make connections in a way that contrasts with the more passive viewing allowed by a straight forward narrative.

            The film features two hit men, Jules and Vincent. They act as the “cues” to the viewer. Through their clothing and dialogue, the film clues in the audience as to where the story is within the whole. One of them is even killed at one point in the film, only to be seemingly resurrected a few scenes later. It is the job of the audience to make the connection that what they are now seeing is taking place before the scenes that preceded it. By returning to an earlier point in the film, the viewer is given more information about an earlier event. The knowledge of the characters eventual death adds an extra layer of poignancy to scene. Without this level of reception on the viewer’s part, the film is merely a collection of scenes with no apparent structure. A passive “reader” of the film would likely be confused; assuming they had seen a film in the middle of the editing process, not yet put together properly.

            Eagleton addresses this in his writing on reception theory, using it as an example of the theory’s limitations. A viewer who is not confused by Pulp Fiction’s radical structure is assumed to already have the capacity to view a film in this manner and therefore is not truly challenged by it. The film is not doing its job, which according to Wolfgang Iser is to question our belief in what literature (or in this case, cinema) is. All that has really happened was that a viewer saw another film, albeit a film that requires more work on the part of the audience.

            This limitation to reception theory is illustrated by the way Pulp Fiction was hailed as an instant classic upon release. The way the film called attention to editing was lauded immediately, an exercise in style over substance that would have surely appealed to the Russian Formalists of the early twentieth century. The instant acceptance into the canon of film history showed that critics were not having their critical assumptions properly challenged, a supposed tenant of the reception theory. A film that calls into question these beliefs is much more likely to be panned initially, only to be recognized for its revolutionary qualities as time catches up to it.

            Reception theory allows for a reader to have more fun with a text through its interactive nature, especially for an imaginative brain. Its failure to transform prior assumptions on the part of the reader doing all the work, however, does proves to be its largest contradiction.